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Attendance at Marlins Park in Miami is on pace to be historically low. (Photo by Marc Serota/Getty... [+] Images)

Getty

Three things stand out in the story of Major League Baseball’s 4% decline in attendance last season: Spring weather was not just bad but horrible, the Toronto Blue Jays stopped flooding the market with tickets for brokers, and the Miami Marlins stopped counting tickets discounted to as low as $1 as part of the attendance in the box score. The league mentioned this change with the Marlins—from the Jeffrey Loria tenure to the new ownership group that includes Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter—as one of the biggest drivers in the league's attendance drop. The gist was that, for all intents and purposes, attendance had been artificially inflated during Loria’s ownership, and therefore one would expect a drop.

That was then; this is now.

One might say that it’s far too early to take stock in how the Miami Marlins’ attendance is faring, but it’s impossible to ignore that the club is seeing numbers that are not only lower than last season's; they are some of the worst in recent memory. While the Marlins are not seeing the biggest drop year-over-year (the Toronto Blue Jays hold that distinction, down nearly 10,000 per game), they are seeing the second-largest drop, at nearly 6,000 per game.

The Blue Jays' drop, while concerning, is from a club that at least was in the top half of league attendance last season. The Marlins were in the cellar—as in five feet under.

Granted, the Marlins opened the season in 2018 against the Chicago Cubs, who have a strong fan base across the country, but you can’t say that masks the near historically low paid attendance the club is seeing early in the 2019 season. Yes, the Marlins opened the season with a series against the Rockies, but then they faced the Mets, who have a solid fan base.

To put in context how abysmal things have been at Marlins Park, through seven games, paid attendance has averaged 9,577 per game. But if we remove the 25,423 that came on Opening Day, the Marlins have seen an average of less than 7,000 per game (6,936).

All told, the Marlins have seen tickets sold accounting for 26% of Marlins Park’s 36,742 seating capacity. And remember, fewer people than that are actually in attendance; the announced attendance in the box scores is based on tickets sold, not turnstile clicks.

Below is the attendance at Marlins Park through seven games. If an opponent is highlighted in bold, it shows that that team won the game as the visitor.

Date

Day

Opponent

Score

Attendance

% of capacity

3/28/2019

Thursday

Rockies

6-3

25,423

69%

3/29/2019

Friday

Rockies

6-1

6,503

18%

3/30/2019

Saturday

Rockies

7-3

7,642

21%

3/31/2019

Sunday

Rockies

3-0

7,559

20%

4/1/2019

Monday

Mets

7-3

6,489

18%

4/2/2019

Tuesday

Mets

6-5

5,934

16%

4/3/2019

Wednesday

Mets

6-4

7,486

20%

Major League Baseball is barely above where it was at this point last year with attendance, and it can't give rainouts as an excuse (there has been only one in the first week of the season, compared with eight at this point last season). While we're just a week in, I'll go out on a limb and say that based on the Blue Jays and Marlins declines, it's not unrealistic to say the league may not make up its 4% decline from last season.

In 2018, the Marlins saw total attendance of 811,104, the first time a club had seen attendance below one million dating to 2004. Who was that club? The Montreal Expos, who in their final season before relocating to Washington, D.C., saw a total of 748,550 over 80 dates for an average of 9,356 per game. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Marlins could see average attendance below what a team headed out of town did 14 years ago. How embarrassing would that be?

Speaking of the Expos, the natural response is to ask why attendance is down in Miami. If you go there, then former Montreal Expos and Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria should take the lion’s share of the blame. He was notorious for short-term splashes in free agency, only to have fire sales in which talent (and player salary) would be dumped. But the Sherman-Jeter ownership group hasn't been immune to that type of behavior. The owners had to know that trading away a future MVP in Christian Yellich, a home run machine in Giancarlo Stanton and one of the best catchers in the game in J.T. Realmuto was like telling a battered fan base, “Don’t bother coming to games.”

Yes, the Marlins need to right the ship with their books. Yes, the strategy makes business sense. But all in all, it’s a horrible look for baseball, and it falls on not just Commissioner Rob Manfred but his predecessor Bud Selig. You can say that the league continues to see record revenues each and every year, but at a certain point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that the decline at the gate is an indicator of an unhealthy limb in baseball’s body.

Remember the Marlins' attendance figures if MLB doesn’t stop its never-ending leaguewide drop. It can no longer point to Loria’s artificially inflated attendance counting as an excuse.

Other written work of mine can be found at Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and USA Today. Freelance work can be found at Variety Weekly and the New York Times.
My work

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Other written work of mine can be found at Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and USA Today. Freelance work can be found at Variety Weekly and the New York Times.
My work has been sourced for analysis and commentary in the NY Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Times, CNN/Money, MarketWatch, Crain's Business NY, Crain's Detroit Business, Crain's Business Chicago, The Deal, the Rocky Mountain News, Fox News, New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated.com, the NY Sun, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Tampa Tribune, Toronto Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sports Review, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, St. Petersburg Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, San Jose Mercury News, the Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal, Sports Fantasy Monthly magazine, USA Today Sports Weekly, and more.
I look forward to your comments, and can be followed on Twitter via @BizballMaury.